Happy Thanksgiving!

Hi everyone!!!

Sorry for the late e-mail; I think I need to, maybe, just send out what notes I have on the day off - that is to say, the late e-mail is not the fault of our wonderful Secretary, Ann Brady. Here are some announcements and upcoming events:

- There are several Thanksgiving activities going on today - I see from the RSVP lists that they are going to be well-attended. Awesome!

- Book Club discussed Our Non-Christian Nation on the 23rd; there was some confusion and members are looking to create a better method of communication.

- Speaking of communication, we have had a group directory book for some time now, and it is badly in need of an update. The way that it works is IF you would like to be included, you submit your name, address, and/or phone number. It is shared only with the other people who have submitted theirs. Much like our meeting notes, I need to get better at either delegating the directory responsibilities or keeping track of them. Pre-New Year Resolution, perhaps.

- Several members of our group confronted the Westboro Baptist Church as they tried to harass people in the Piedmont Triad. Apparently, there was a huge turnout of counter protesters. 

- I dropped the ball on mentioning that the "Galaxy Quest" documentary, "Never Surrender" was playing at the Regal Grande in Friendly Center on the 26th. Sorry. :(

- Charles the Great returned from his international trip with stories of feeding hyenas and falcons, as well as eluding a robber in Addis Ababa. 

- The final Shelf Assembly will take place that IRC on Saturday, December 14th. All we should need to do is attach the dividers into the shelves and stain them! (Flying Spaghetti Monster willing!)

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Our topic for this week was traditions (aka - peer pressure from dead people). Karen brought a bunch of cool secular/Pagan ritual books for us to look through. A lot of people shared what they do (and don't do) as far as Christmas. We talked about a lot of the Germanic origins of Christmas - Krampus, etc. We talked about secular and non-secular Christmas music. It seemed to be the prevailing attitude of the group that , "just because I don't believe in the subject of the song doesn't mean that I cannot find it beautiful/fun/nostalgic, etc."

It seemed that most of the people present still did some form of Santa belief with children. Speaking of children, a new member messaged me not long ago about putting together some kid centered or family oriented events for the group. We've talked about this before, but it hasn't really gotten beyond the idea swapping stage. Would anyone like to step up as a family event organizer? I would LOVE that. Alas, I digress... as evidenced by my next point:

I brought up Rant by Chuck Palahniuk because of this.

Next time, our subject is CATHARSIS (or, how we deal with difficult family members/venting.)

MUCH LOVE TO YOU ALL ON THIS THANKSGIVING HOLIDAY!!!

Another Two in One!

Hi everyone!

I wanted to write you earlier, but, per Chris Garland's question - I wanted to see what we might be facing if the very probable outcome of Friday night being a white flag night - so I've emailed our contact at the IRC. Kerry Nance said that it won't be an issue because the center will be open Saturday morning.

November 3rd

Updates/News:

There was a fantastic Halloween ritual, courtesy of Lyn.

Book Club will be meeting Nov. 23rd in the community room of Earth Fare at 5-630 pm - They'll be reading Our Non-Christan Nation.

Lyn told us about this amazing museum exhibit.

We will be doing shelving assembly at the IRC on November 9th.

On the 10th, we will be doing Deconversion Stories. Members, who want to, will be sharing stories of how their faith disappeared or changed.

Here are the summary and the updates from last week: we talked about (many other things but circled back around to) comedy and all of its various facets:

Derek kicked things off telling us about Pete Holmes. It was interesting. Molly went on to talk about the hypocrisy of people who are offended by slights against their ideals, but when they make similar comments, they are "just kidding." This segued to the outrage at Happy Holidays and the war on Christmas.Apparently, Hallmark has begun its 24 hour movie marathons of formulaic Christmas movies. Someone mentioned, either a documentary a book, called The Lie Everyone Loves - I can't remember which it was - anyone?

Eventually, we got to satire and Poe's Law, which brought out a lot fake news, bots retweeting, and the shouting down of anyone dissident. We talked about the line between fascism and mob rule. This brought us back to laughter - particularly as a coping mechanism. We brought up Nihilist Memes and what it says/means about the society that has spawned it. When is something satire? When is it something higher or lower? We talked about identities and the use of humor as a cultural shibboleth. When is something satire and when something is just making fun, rather than making a point. Was it all right to make fun of Sarah Palin - the general consensus was that making fun of her absurd political positions was fine, but attacking her ad hominem was off the charts.

This segued into a discussion of what is admissible for humor and what is mean or bullying. Lyn brought up William F. Buckley - the guy who pulled this. ...and this.

Chris Garland brought up Ricky Gervais' Humanity and, again, the nuance with regard to what is off the table (or not off the table) as far as comedy goes.

Not long after this, Scott brought up a few points: chem trails, black helicopters, George Soros' being a supposed Nazi, and other things of the ilk - that, I think, may have given some people (myself included) *ahem* pause. I cannot speak for the group in its entirety, but I think we handled it as well as we could: people tried to find a common ground, appealed to rationale, and used direct communication. Scott has dropped his membership without saying anything else to me.

Eventually, humor won out, as Karen brought us back to our discussion about profanity and connected it with the scatology, religion, and in group vs. out group. We continued on to talk about the out group jokes target Polish people (with a brief stop mentioning the renaissance fair) and the proclivity of recently discriminated against groups going after new groups. No one could think of, for instance, an Italian American Presidential hopeful who has become a front runner for either of the major parties. (From what I could see, the closest was Mario Cuomo with vice presidential contenders: John Pastore, Peter Rodino, Joseph Alioto, Geraldine Ferraro - my sources on these the Wayback Machine.)

We closed out with how a discussion of how we may have been meant to perceive Archie Bunker. Were we supposed to laugh at his relative ignorance and harmlessness? Or, were we supposed to feel animus toward him?

Next time: We will be doing deconversion stories! I HOPE TO SEE YOU THERE!!!

Here are notes from the lovely Ann Brady - regrettably, I dropped the ball on sending these out. We love you Ann! Thank you!

Secular Sunday

November 5, 2019

Attendees:

·         Ann Brady	·         Bob	·         Sean Bienert
·         Karen	·         Judy	·         Ronnie
·         Chris	·         Tabitha	·         Hunter
·         Ryan	·         Adrienne	·         Deanna

Announcements:

Dave Warnock speaking thing will not be until Feb or March 2020. He wrote a book called Dying Out Loud. He has ALS and is a member of the Clergy Project.

We have two dates for the shelving – November 9^th, and December 7^th or 14^th . The 9^th is definite, Dec. is going to be “if needed”. You can rsvp on Meetup.

Book club met yesterday. Small group, 5 people. Karen’s daughter is writing a mashup of Good Omens and the Scarlet Pimpernel. She went and said the meeting was good.

Halloween party was great.

Discussion Notes:

Coming out as atheist – fear of rejection. Ronnie says he is pretty open about it now, but it does put people off sometimes. Karen recently had her secular and political coming out. She ran a state-wide homeschool group. She was outed by a friend on Facebook.

Chris wanted to know if anyone has every been denigrated as an atheist by any religion other than Christians. Ronnie has experiences with Hindus, but they weren’t really bad about it.

Deanna has experienced that many times over the years. It’s more acceptable to be gay than atheist.

Scathing Atheist says we should be glad that Christians don’t follow the Bible closely (not sure I got this right.)

Grace vs. works.

Christian pop music – KLOVE. Take a pop song, change out the word “Baby” and replace it with Jesus and you have a Christian pop song.

Where are the good bad guys? Rise of the anti-hero. What is the back story for the really bad guy?

History of the group: GAO, Science Sunday, then Sean took over the Sunday meetings and we started having Secular Sunday. We became FAACT because some people had issues with the word atheist. Then we became SCOTT.